We prepare the wood, wadding, glaze, we load.
The preparation is a ritual, where each part is just as important for the firing to go well. As the day goes on, the wadding is placed onto each piece, the wood turns into stacked walls, the anagama almost full, I can almost hear it yawn. It begins to rain.
We close her, my pieces are not mine anymore, but hers.
We work with materials that breathe, and each will leave their mark on our pieces, fire painting its way along them, the clay receiving each stroke.
We fire for four days continuously, keeping the anagama breathing. We are witness to the life of the fire, from its first breaths outside of the kiln, to its last ones when we try to achieve flashing.
It’s almost midnight. The kiln door opens and my knees hurt due to the heat, I see a sea of flames, yet I cannot hesitate, we will lose degrees. I load.
The door closes again. I look at her and she gently nods. She tells me to look at the chimney and hear the sound of the fire flowing, I follow. Wood-firing is trust.
I get to know fire as a living material, intangible yet tangible.
A loss of intention appears and makes space for the unpredictable and the wonderful.
I cannot longer be in control but let go.
We look through the peep-holes and there they are, glowing luminescent pieces, vitrifying into the rocks and places they came from.
Unloading day today.
I feel like I am greeting childhood friends, fragments of myself in clay and fire that I have known for long, yet I am meeting them transformed into a new expression.
They show something that goes further than my hands shaping clay: fear, awe, reverence, wildness all combined.
Now the anagama sleeps again.
